Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
to maintain the original language of the working-group reports in the final
summaries, but the United States, the Soviet Union, and several other
countries took the opportunity to revisit those reports with their own
interests in mind. They sought to water down statements from Working
Group 2 on the impacts of climate change and to highlight the uncertain-
ties of the basic science laid out by Working Group 1. Few nations targeted
Working Group 3 in the plenary, but only because that U.S.-led group
had produced anemic and toothless policy proposals focused primarily on
technological solutions, to which few nations could object.
The process was detailed and litigious, often maddeningly so. The
United States and Saudi Arabia objected to the word “confidence” in the
IPCC's proposed prediction on future warming.
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The two nations also
proposed replacing a call for understanding the costs of climate change
with a call for understanding its “costs and benefits,” and Saudi Arabia
invidiously but understandably suggested replacing “carbon dioxide”—
an inevitable product of their biggest export, oil— with the more general
(and, to be fair, more accurate) “greenhouse gases.”
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Member nations of the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) argued that the
final documents should explicitly clarify that the international community
supported only “safe” nuclear energy solutions, thereby undermining the
viability of a major energy competitor for oil.
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India and other developing
countries pressed for language pinning responsibility for CO
2
-induced
warming on the industrialized world, thus preemptively diminishing their
own responsibility for future solutions under the UNFCCC.
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Perhaps
most famously, at a meeting in Geneva in November of 1990, Peter Timeon
of the Micronesian Republic of Kiribati urged the group to say that the
greenhouse effect and sea-level rise not only “could” but in fact “would”
threaten the survival of island nations— a one-letter change that American
representative John Knauss rejected, nearly scuttling the final plenary ses-
sion of the IPCC in the final hour.
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In each case, the debate focused on
the scientific accuracy of proposed changes, but clearly the science stood
proxy for the real political and economic interests at stake.
institutionaliZing the Primacy of science
The awkward marriage of science and politics under the IPCC underscored
the dilemma at the heart of the fight against global warming. Scientists and
